English Channel qualifier- not doing that again! Except, yeah, I am 😭

On October 11th at 9:30 a.m. I began my 6-hour sub-60° Fahrenheit English Channel qualifier at Sellwood Park on the banks of the Willamette river. The day before I checked the conditions at the English Channel finding the weather better, the water and air warmer. 

I had not prepared all my feeds in advance so that there was a little to do that morning. I used oat milk, oat milk with espresso, cluster dextrin with maple syrup and electrolytes, and Tailwind for my feeds. Amanda came over and helped me with my feeds before taking me to Sellwood, I would definitely have been late to the start without her.

A note on the feeds: Of all the feeds the cluster dextrin was the least irritating to my stomach and then the oat milk. The oat milk with coffee did not settle so well but stayed down. (You might be wondering why I'm adding this part in, if you have read this blog for any kind of time you know that I frequently do not keep my feeds down.) I did have one small vomit during the swim, courtesy of oat milk/espresso, but otherwise very good as far as nausea goes.

We checked the water temperature, finding it hovering between 59.8 and 60° fahrenheit, just cold enough to count for my English Channel qualifier. with some concern that the water would heat up mid swim and nullify my effort, I got in the water along with another local summer, Veronica, who chose to wear a wetsuit and accompany me for the first few minutes.

I began my route, first heading south / upstream towards the houseboats. I swam to the marina gas station and turned around. Back at the dock where I got in I had my first feed and my spirit was much improved, the cool water boosting my mood. After my feed I continued in the same direction, meaning this time heading north and upstream. I turned around just before the no-wake buoy at the North houseboats, returned to the dock and had my second feed.

I repeated this process for the first 3-4 hours, then I began doing houseboat only laps. Going north didn't feel quite right to me, over the years I've spent a lot of time swimming south on the river and then turning around and swimming north. part of this is because the swim South is against the current while the swim North is with the current. It's always easier mentally to have the current assist on the way back. Around hour four is when I started struggling mentally, and switching to the most comfortable circumstances (south, then north) was very helpful for the mental aspect of the swim.

Around hour four I got ANGRY, usually I'm a pretty happy swimmer, but I don't know what happened. Hour three observer notes say, "Cheerful and strong", hour 3.5, "coherent, feeling cold" and by hour 5, "I'm Fuc*ing cold! I want this done!" I got pissed. Half an hour later EVERYTHING was cramping, I HURT. I remember thinking, "you only have to do this once" and that pulled me through.

In the end, it happened, my friends who supported me got me through it. I had support swimmers periodically that stayed in for usually around half an hour. My last support swimmer, Eric, looked at me on the last houseboat lap, I had stopped to try to stretch out a cramp in my back, and said, "I've been in 20 minutes and I'm cold, I can't imagine after five hours." Yeah, before this swim I couldn't imagine either, bit this was by far the hardest swim I've done, mentally and physically, and while I was miserable cold, not the coldest I've e been. I didn't pass out when I got out of the water and warmed up pretty quickly. I had the best shore support who greeted me with ramen noodles, stripped me, changed me into warms, and drove me to sauna. Recovery experience, five stars. Swim? 3.5. 

Joke is on me. I'm going to be doing MANY more sub 60 swims, 6-10 hours in length to prepare for The Channel. Thankfully I hired a coach to help woth planning all the training, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it again, but of I want it to be my only EC attempt, Ingotta put in the tome and get comfortable woth the cold.